Installation DVD

Miscellaneous setup

Card Reader

The "special" card reader on the left for adding storage is seen as just another plain card reader.
Use LVM if you want to extend storage space from the internal HDD/SSD, but don't try to suspend while using the card reader on the left as corruptions may result.
Note that with the reader on the right won't work with Memory Sticks, but no one uses them so it's not a big problem.

Wireless Activity LED

LEDs are functioning again as of the 2.6.30+ kernel updates.

Note: madwifi is no longer needed, and is no longer packaged by rpmfusion in any case.

Touchpad

Tap-to-click is disabled by default. If using GNOME, you can enable it by choosing System > Preferences > Mouse > Enable Tapping. For every other desktop (XFCE, LXDE, fluxbox, KDE, etc), or to have tap2click available at the login manager, use the following method to enable it:

In F12: vertical scrolling works, but tap-to-click is disabled. To enable tap2click paste the following to /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-synaptics.fdi

Speakers do not auto-mute when using headphones

In F11, add the following line to /etc/modprobe.d/aceraspirefix.conf and then reboot.

options snd-hda-intel model=acer-aspire

Built-in Camera

Works out of the box. Use the cheese app which is installed by default to test. Other v4l2 webcam-using apps include: vlc, ekiga, ucview, camE, xawtv, zoneminder, and motion.

Notes on performance

If you have the 8 GB SSD/512MB RAM version, the flash performance may not be so good. Linux tries to swap often, and the SSD write speed is too slow (~ 4MB to 7.8MB/sec) to do much swapping. Use a lighter desktop like XFCE or add more RAM (which is not easy; you have to fully disassemble the Aspire One losing the warranty).

If you have upgraded the RAM (1.5GB max) or you don't have a heavy load, it may help to disable swap, as well as to move /tmp, /var/tmp, /var/log, and /var/cache/yum off of the flash and onto tmpfs ramdisk. It may also help to use a journal-less ext2 VS ext3, and to include the "noatime,nodiratime" mount options in /etc/fstab to limit unnecessary writes.

Note: if installing F11 or F12 from liveusb, your root '/' filesystem will always be ext4 (f10 and previous was ext3). The benefits of ext2 is debatable, as the tiny performance increase is more than offset by long fsck's after unclean shutdowns.

If you really want to increase performance, use a fast SDHC memory card in the left reader, and use it for /home, /var and /usr.

Misc:

On SSD it is tremendously helpful to disable your browsers' disk cache.

Disabling SELinux (/etc/sysconfig/selinux) can buy you a small (~7%) amount of performance, if security isn't a concern. It also decreases boot time by a few seconds.

Disabling unnecessary services can almost cut the bootup time in half (18 seconds is doable in F11, as reported by bootchartd). Depending on your requirements for a netbook, it is safe to disable at least: sendmail, atd, nfs*, rpc*, portreserve, live*, avahi-daemon, cups, gpm, ip6tables, bluetooth, lvm2-monitor, mdmonitor, pcscd, and abrtd

xorg.conf

A sample xorg.conf that provides a larger virtual screen - also configures my 19" VGA screen when connected...adjust the Screen and Display sections for whatever display you have connected to your VGA port

NOTE: this seems to require xserver 1.6 and xrandr 1.3 which are Fedora 11 and this may not work in earlier versions of Fedora.